« Art Schools: New Issues »

On the occasion of the publication of the new issue of artpress2, "Art Schools: New Issues," edited by David Cascaro, Christophe Kihm, and Emmanuel Tibloux, we would like to invite you to meet the authors. Along with the toast and the presentation of the new issue of the magazine, this will be the opportunity to reexamine recent transformations at work in art schools and insist on the evidence and solidity of the ties between schools and the art world, in a place strongly committed to supporting young artistic creation

The European harmonization of higher education, which is producing major changes in art schools (new statuses, groupings of institutions, modification of degrees), has also involved a reconsideration of the matter of pedagogy in multiple ways. Enhancing the performance of schools with international influence, renewing artistic practices that make transmission and education into areas of resistance, studying the figures of the artist-teacher, developing formats for the performance-conference, the biennale-school, or the school without professors: this issue of artpress2 makes the renewed presence of the teaching of art a point of entry. "Art Schools: New Issues" sets out to assess the situation based on the work already done in French art schools.
Art schools are places where heterogeneous knowledge and expertise cohabitate, where "traditional" practices - engraving, silkscreen printing, silver-based photographic processes, art history and aesthetics - have been challenged by the entrance of new practical and theoretical fields, from music to new technologies to video, literature, cultural studies, and philosophy... How do hermitage and hub, the arts and crafts studio and the uprooted workshop, group dynamics and personal project, combine these days?
The current context provides these questions with a specific framework. Indeed, international competition between schools as well as their local presence (a factor in the attractiveness of evolving metropolises), the imposed paradigm of research in art, the increasing share of design, the ageism of contemporary art... all present these places with new conditions in building and sustaining laboratories on the margins of markets and institutions, while subjecting them to an imperative: producing the models of an economy of knowledge.
To draw up this overview, we have solicited contributions and testimonies from privileged players in the life of French art schools. The appendix of this issue features a timeline and a bibliography.